You Made It Weird #87: Chris Hardwick

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Chris Hardwick (You know him! I know you do! Nerdist podcast! Comedy! SHIPMATES! (Seriously, Pete loves Shipmates) comes by to FINALLY make it weird! And this one gets funny, weird, strange… sexy? I mean, what could we possibly mean by that? No idea. Just enjoy, you weirdos!!

Love the podcast, Pete! Slowly making my way through it.
I’m so glad Chris Hardwick knows Latin! I appreciated the Latin humor. I took 5 years of that in high school, only to fail the AP Latin exam. Ah well.

Wow, CH said a lot of things that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I’ve been wondering, “Why is it that every time I’m left alone with my thoughts I end up worse than when I started.” Then he says, “We are constantly looking for ways to distract ourselves from ourselves.” and talking about that strong internal monologue. It’s… just kind of wild to have some validation. And now, I guess I can resume playing to find out the exciting conclusion.

P.S. I realize this is a pretty old podcast but I’m caught up so I started working backward.

Loved this Podcast. I discovered Nerdist last Christmas and have been consuming your podcasts as fast as I can since then. Pete and Chris are both amazing, and it’s inspiring to me to see the journeysyou guys are taking (although Chris, your troll-ignoring abilities are obviously still developing). Your openness, honesty and gosh-darned niceness shines through. Don’t change a thing. Except maybe crispy burritos; that doesn’t sound tasty at all.

It made my day to hear Chris say “enjoy your crispy burrito” at the end of the podcast. Months ago I used “crispy burrito” as the name for a route that I set at my local indoor rock climbing gym. No one has ever gotten the reference but I still love it because it’s a mashup of my 2 favorite podcasts!

@JuiceMachine: Hey man (or lady!) I think maybe you may have misunderstood some of what I was trying to relay so for that, I apologize for the misunderstanding. Here’s was you maybe missed, so I’ll go a little more into detail. I’m not making insinuations about Jesuits–at least FOUR (that I know of) of my former Jesuit teachers were busted. One of them committed suicide over it. Another was banished to a retirement community where one of his former students tracked him down and nearly killed him. Facts are facts, friend. You don’t have to like them, they just are what they are. I was CRUSHED when I found out because the third one was my favorite teacher. He was hilarious and was a comedy inspiration because he was able to teach a subject like Latin in an engaging, funny way. He taught me that (applied to comedy) you can relay ANY information with the right approach and people will absorb it. BELIEVE ME I didn’t want this to be true. He was one of my high school heroes. I was careful to say “not every Jesuit was like this”. I was also careful to say that these are my opinions based on my experiences and I’m not judging anyone, but of course you breezed by all of that because it didn’t justify your rage and you clearly just wanted to attack. WHAT A SURPRISE. You called me “garbage” and wrote us off as “idiot LA people”. The scope of your views are so prejudicial and narrow that you can casually write off an entire community of human beings and that simple phrase underscores it. Does it matter to you that we did nothing of the sort to you? Why attack? I’m sorry that the world has burned you so much that you feel said rage, but I am not your enemy nor am I attacking you or saying you’re wrong to believe what you believe. YOU, however, ARE doing those things. Thanks for proving some of my points with your rude, judgmental anger!

They’re not religious study majors. They’re comedians. Guests are asked to relate their belief and understanding of religion (as well studied or misinformed as they may be). It’s fascinating unless you have the tendency to get butt-hurt over it.

Hardwick is just garbage with religion. Where to start. People think we do rituals to make stuff happen. (stupid) Bearded man on a cloud, must follow all biblical laws or none. Thinks he was taught that some guys got together to make up the bible to control the masses. Deists.. 2 founding fathers maybe 3? He thinks they ‘workshop gods’ because the OT has a violent God and the NT is peaceful God? The gospels are BRUTAL, so is the crucification, Acts violence, prison, martyrs, Revelation is 1000X the OT wars. Slurs Jesuits on ‘stuff’, quotes Davinci code crap about celibacy, makes disgusting ‘insinuations’ of child molesting priests… just every stupid ‘religious opinion’ and angle he overhears from idiot LA people. Worse yet.. Pete does know to correct much of this and doesn’t.

Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed this episode – it’s great to hear you two talk to each other so openly and share life lessons (sorry, can’t think of a less corny phrase) with each other in such an open way. Best of luck to Chris in all his new writing endeavors! I’m sure I speak for many people when I say we look forward to hearing more of your voice in all those places – TV, your standup, homeless men shouting on street corners (you’re writing for them these days, too, right?).

Pete, you’ll never be too blue for me- I’m a delicate flower of a lady (pff) and you make me guffaw in the car at 6:30 in the morning. The grosser something is, the more it makes me laugh. Most of the time!

I was having a GRAND time this episode, sailing through with many laughs and fascinating moments and thinking it might even be one of my very favorite YMIW’s yet, then, screeching halt. The very old fashion, wives-tales-like talk about sex abuse in the church was kind of shocking – aside from the obvious offensive statements, the wildly lacking *science* of the remarks really startled me coming from Mr. Hardwick.

Letting priests marry has nothing to do with it, not hiring gay priests has nothing to do with it. Attractive kids are also not somehow more deserving of rape, it doesn’t matter less if an “ugly” kid was attacked. Both of these concepts imply that rape and child abuse are about “sex”, and that is not the case. A pedophile is a pedophile. The vast majority of pedophiles identify as straight and often ARE married. The abuse is about any number of mental health issues, or criminal behaviors, and happens in all segments of society.

I am a Hardwick fan, and have seen a lot of positive changes that Chris has made over the years, so in spite of being offended from time to time, I recognize his humanity and still hold on to hope he’ll catch up on things when he can. I also know that he is very busy, and unlikely to have had the time to think about and read up on everything, especially stuff that is no fun at all to learn about – even if these topics may not be relevant to him in his daily life, man what a drag if is for kind, generally normal and well-meaning people to think about.

In an attempt to cut to the chase and hopefully provide more concise info, you know, for the Science and Learning, I found these to be the most useful:

I hope that really *anyone* who thought those arguments regarding sex abuse were reasonable or sounded like “common sense” will read up on more current science and studies, and think about the issue more deeply. I grew up in the Catholic church, and I too spent a long time marching right along with what “everybody knows” – even for years after leaving. At some point, I realized I was just basing my views on what other people said without reading up on the science and figuring it out myself.

Also, I’m not condemning faith or religion, just people who rape. I generally figure even the most devout Catholic would like to know what is ACTUALLY going on and how to handle this topic in the real world so they can try to make their church better.

Samantha and Overlord count me amongst those who have read “Ishmael” such a great book the others in the series aren’t bad either.

As for the episode great as usual. I wonder how YMIW would have turned out if Chelsea felt like leaving the house? Would the podcast still be called YMIW? Either way thanks Nerdist Overlord Chris for the channel and for Pete’s podcast.

The part where they were discussing have girlfriends that riffed with them resonated with me. It made me think back to past girlfriends and I realized my favorite so to speak girlfriends or relationships were the ones where they can of rolled with my goofiness. While I’m no comedian I believe that the best relationships are the ones where you throw out something and the other person just throws it back to you and that good ol “pinging and ponging” Pete speaks of happens.

So Pete since you are doing a new hour special does that mean we get a new Comedy CD and or DVD out the deal as well!!

Pete & Chris – You are both such a delight. This was one my favourite episodes. Pete – your laugh is one of my favourite things in the world and it makes me smile when you laugh. Chris – I know what your girlfriend looks like from a Reddit post, so that’s fun. P.S. I want to be BFF’s with you, Pete Holmes. Shhhh, just go with it.

I was wondering if either of you have read “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn? Once you get past the premise of a gorilla who communicates psychically to teach philosophy, the book is fantastic. I read it when I was about thirteen/fourteen and it actually changed the way I looked at religion. Granted, I was already going through a process of questioning and contemplating my Catholic upbringing, but “Ishmael” really helped shape and guide those thoughts. I really started looking at The Bible, especially the Old Testament, as parables and guidelines for people to live by, as well as a history of the changing world of the Middle East from nomadic to agricultural.

I don’t know if this applied to the Catholic church all over, or just the brand that existed in colonial Quebec, but IIRC, this is how the whole land-distribution thing played out:

Farm land was laid out in seigneuries, where the big honcho would rent narrow plots with a tiny amount of river frontage to the habitants. Even though they were only rentals, the habitants could individual portions of the plot to their sons. Since Catholics were encouraged to have a bazillion babies, there were often a lot of sons around to inherit, so the plots started getting narrower and narrower.

It was an easy way out to shove the younger sons into the clergy or army and leave everything to the eldest.

@mitchell you can get a new icon if you sign up for gravatar. That’s how I have my cat as my avatar.

I loved this episode. It become major talking points to my soon to be not released episode of my mostly ignored podcast. But seriously I loved the introspection. Some day I hope my podcast is me…the me in my head. But what if the me in my head isn’t nearly as interesting as I think is it? I’m definitely amused by the me in my head…..maybe I’m a narcissist?

Pete and Chris, your mention of Christian hypocrisy reminds me of a book that I read a few weeks ago called “When Christians Get It Wrong”. It’s by Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor in Kansas City, and it’s written in a way that it has appeal both to Christians and people who are frustrated with Christianity. It covers hypocrisy, politics, questioning “God’s plan”, and it even touches on the disconnect that exists between Christians and non-Christians over homosexuality. It’s not a long book, but it packs in a lot of poignant messages, and I found it to be a great read. After listening to so many discussions of religion on this podcast, I’d highly recommend it for all of the weirdos out there.